A TV reporter this week paid with his job for altering a video (he says to make it funny) and posting it to YouTube.
What do you think of this? What is the line in cyberspace between your job and you life? Could I get in the same trouble? Would this have been different if he had been a journalism professor instead of a journalist? What if he were a basketball player? What, if any, professional standards were violated? What do you think of the result?
In other vein, what was the Huffington Post's responsibility here? Revisit my exchange this week with Jay Rosen and others about accuracy in citizen journalism. How did accuracy matter here? Could this case be an argument for the participatory nature of online media? A spoof made it to a larger audience as a reality, but ultimately the audience verified that it was inaccurate. How did the pressures of speed and competition play into this case?
Friday, February 27, 2009
Fired for funny
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2 comments:
I don't think the doctorer or the video should have been fired. His disclaimer on YouTube clearly noted that this was a spoof, and I doubt he was trying to sabotage the reporter, as the reporter claimed. While unprofessional (he should have been smart enough not to put his real name on his YouTube acct), he was never intending to hurt anyone, as he stated in the interview.
I think the Huffington Post should be the ones punished, for picking up gossip and rumor and then publishing it as fact. This is yet another case of lazy, misinformed "Citizen Journalism".
I agree with Claire.
The reporter put up a disclaimer. Its not his fault the Huffington Post ran this without checking it out and somehow without the disclaimer. I don't believe he was trying to discredit or sabotage the reporter either. He just genuinely thought it was funny.
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